Does it really matter? In most cases, shouldn't software just be compiled with all the features it was designed to have? In those cases that it really absolutely doesn't, you can always rebuild from the source RPM, which is far more configurable than silly USE flags anyways.

And why would you ever build software WITHOUT support for something unless there's a security risk, or you only have 20 MB of disk space?

There are so many people in the Gentoo community who seem to have these insane obsessions, like only using GTK+ programs because the 10 MB of Qt libraries is too much, or using ancient underpowered Window managers and text-mode only programs because they can't stand having more than 5% of their 4 gigs of RAM filled. I think some of those people need to go into therapy.

"Does it really matter? In most cases, shouldn't software just be compiled with all the features it was designed to have?"

Nope. Example: MPlayer seems to have an ability to perform encoding functions, which I have absolutely no use for. On Gentoo, when I install MPlayer, I have an option not to compile any encoding features, since I have no use for them -- the only media I encode are MP3 files, and I don't use MPlayer for that. Another example: MPlayer can be built to take advantages of several types of video cards. All of my machines have NVidia cards, so on Gentoo I build MPlayer to use _only_ NVidia cards. Why should my build of MPlayer support i810 series of Intel cards if I don't have any? These are only 2 of at least 50 possible features that you can turn on or off easily in Gentoo.

And this is not about the disk space either. It's about having control over your operating system -- not the other way around. If I want to use an operating system that insists on controlling my computing experience, I can use Vista or some other Windows OS.

Insane obsessions, you say? How so? This is _my_ machine and _I_ want to have the final say in what gets installed on it. Me. Not some dude in Redmond or some other dude at Red Hat, Ubuntu or any other distro du jour.

Does it really matter? In most cases, shouldn't software just be compiled with all the features it was designed to have? In those cases that it really absolutely doesn't, you can always rebuild from the source RPM, which is far more configurable than silly USE flags anyways.

And why would you ever build software WITHOUT support for something unless there's a security risk, or you only have 20 MB of disk space?

First of all, what's the point in having ALL possible features compiled-in when you know you will never ever have any use for those features? It'll just waste memory when running that app in question! And no, SRPM is not "far more configurable" and it's a lot bigger hassle than just doing emerge.

As for the question why would I want to build something without the support for everything possible...well, as I already stated I just won't have use for everything possible! And I also noted that it'll just waste memory for nothing..

Besides, when compiling from the source you can also INCLUDE features which are not enabled in your precious binary distros..One such feature could be support for proprietary file formats which you won't get in your distro unless you find a repository with such and know how to add them to your package manager..

There are so many people in the Gentoo community who seem to have these insane obsessions, like only using GTK+ programs because the 10 MB of Qt libraries is too much, or using ancient underpowered Window managers and text-mode only programs because they can't stand having more than 5% of their 4 gigs of RAM filled. I think some of those people need to go into therapy.

Ever heard that people might have differing tastes for things...? I know it might sound just amazing and unimaginable but it does happen :O I use GNOME myself but I don't use any Qt apps and as such have also removed support for Qt from everything on my installation. Why? It's not about disk space..It's just that GTK+ and Qt just doesn't mix and match nicely together. Qt apps feel really out-of-place on a GNOME desktop and I hate such. (And no, I don't have 4 gigs of RAM on any of my machines. Actually, I don't have even 1 gig..)